The family television has been required in recent years to display video from a number of different sources. These include broadcast television signals received at an outdoor antenna, cable television signals, video signals from a video cassette recorder (VCR), and satellite signals, including analog and digital format signals. A very recent use of television displays is for displaying a connection to a computer network, such as the Internet.
Browsing (or "surfing") the Internet is fast becoming a leading pastime in the United States. People browsing on the Internet often find it somewhat addictive, and spend large amounts of time surfing. Pricing structures which provide unlimited connect time for a fixed fee encourage such use. One of the problems created by heavy Internet usage for Internet surfers is that they often miss their favorite television programming due to their concentration on their surfing activities.
In order to solve this problem, a commercially available system has been proposed by Sony named the WebTV Internet Terminal, and is designed to work with televisions that have Picture-In-Picture (PIP) capability. If an address on the world wide web appears during a program or commercial on the broadcast signal, a viewer is able to access the web site at about the same time as the web site is mentioned. A viewer can watch the television broadcast signal in the Picture-In-Picture while the user is browsing the Web, and enlarge the television signal when something of interest appears on the television signal. A major disadvantage of this system is that it requires a television that has PIP capability, and many televisions in the United States do not have this feature, as many consumers have not opted for this feature in the past, which typically adds significantly to the cost of the television.
Other proposed solutions involve altering the television itself, by providing an "interactive" television with built-in Web browsing capability. These television sets, proposed by Zenith Electronics, include a 28.8 Kbps modem and an Ethernet port. Another system, proposed by Gateway 2000, is an actual computer with television viewing capability.
All of the above-described systems require either a specialized television, or one with PIP capability, and does not account for the millions of televisions currently in use in homes throughout the country, as well as the many models that are still being sold without such capability. A real problem with purchasing a television with such enhanced capabilities is the inevitable need to update the system when the current technology advances. As televisions represent major purchases for most consumers, it becomes prohibitively expensive to replace the television whenever the Web browsing technology makes significant advances.